Back to academy
Free course
Intermediate
5 lessons
108 min
Quartz Scheduler
Learn Quartz cron syntax for Java schedulers, including seconds, optional years, ?, L, W, #, and business-calendar patterns.
What you will learn
- Read and write Quartz cron expressions.
- Understand seconds and optional year fields.
- Use ?, L, W, and # operators correctly.
- Avoid copying Quartz expressions into Unix or Kubernetes cron.
Course lessons
1. Quartz field order
18 min
Understand why Quartz cron starts with seconds.
Seconds
Minutes
Hours
Day fields
Optional year
Exercise: Translate `*/15 * * * *` into Quartz format.
2. Question marks and day fields
20 min
Use ? correctly in day-of-month and day-of-week fields.
?
Day-of-month
Day-of-week
Specific day schedules
Exercise: Build a weekday 09:00 Quartz expression.
3. Special operators
28 min
Use L, W, and # for business schedules.
L
W
#
Last day
Nearest weekday
Nth weekday
Exercise: Create first Monday and last day of month schedules.
4. Quartz vs Unix cron
18 min
Recognize dialect differences before moving schedules across systems.
Field count
Seconds
Special operators
Portability
Exercise: Identify which sample expressions are Quartz-only.
5. Application scheduler design
24 min
Use Quartz cron as part of a reliable application scheduling system.
Job identity
Misfires
Triggers
Persistence
Monitoring
Exercise: Draft a runbook for a Quartz-triggered billing job.